Efficiency, goblin mode, and one person to love

This new year, let's opt out of efficiency goals (and goblin goals) and ask: who's one person I can slow down to love?

The demands of efficiency

Efficiency is our society’s “one agreed-upon value”. If we agree on nothing else—politics, religion, racial justice, gender—we can all agree on getting stuff done.

Never is this more obvious than in the New Year. Exercise more. Eat better. Fitter, happier, more productive. Less obvious, however, are goals like “enjoying life more” or “slowing down to capture the moment”—these, too, are other ways to maximize pleasure or time. Just think for a second about how we spend our vacations now. We spend thousands of dollars to rush off to somewhere far away, only to visit nine different European capitals in six days or sit on a Mexican beach wondering if we’re maximizing our precious time off. Am I relaxed enough? Am I “doing this right”?

Jacques Ellul calls it la technique: “the totality of methods arrived at and having absolute efficiency . . . in every field of human activity”. This is a very French way of saying that every part of our life is about “doing it right” and “doing it better”. The chickens of the technological society have come home to roost: countless Instagram accounts offering numerated lists for better living, magazines in the checkout aisle offering (numerated) tips for better sex.

Life is no longer something to live, but to hack.

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Goblin revolt

There has been a backlash against efficiency, of course. If you haven’t been keeping up, “Goblin mode” was voted 2022’s word of the year. Oxford Dictionary defines goblin mode as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”

Examples of “going goblin” include-but-are-not-limited-to: spending the day in your sweatpants, wiping your nose on your shirt, eating shredded cheese over the sink, and showing the world how few F’s you truly give. Goblin mode is “who even knows what day it is”. Goblin mode is what you did from December 26th-31st—unless you have little kids, in which case they stared up at you all week, like pigeons at the park, wondering when you were going to give them the snacks again.

I, for one, am sympathetic to the goblins. On top of feeling the pressure to be efficient, people are tired of feeling the pressure to care about everything, educate themselves on every issue, and never say or do anything incorrect ever, lest they die. Humans cannot long-withstand taskmasters without revolting. So I’m predicting a lot more “goblin goals” in 2023. We will leave Egypt behind. Like Toad in the children’s story, we will cry out in despair, “I will do it all tomorrow…today I will take life easy”.

goblins!

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Slowing down to love

But the problem with efficiency goals on the one hand, and goblin goals on the other, is that both are pretty self-involved and self-focused. One is a product of a technological society, and the other a product of a therapeutic age. Neither take into account the…wait for it…other people in our lives. Neither have much to do with love. So while “slowing down” in 2023 might be a very good thing, I want to invite us to slow down for the sake of other people.

John Swinton, theology professor at Aberdeen, says that love has a speed. Moving quickly through life renders love impossible. The average human being walks at a speed of 3 mph. That means Jesus of Nazareth (himself a human being) walked at 3 mph, too. Love has a speed. If we are moving quicker than 3 mph, we are moving faster than God.

A few years ago, Swinton was talking about this “three mile an hour God” with a doctor at a major research hospital.

(The doctor) said “Well, I reckon in my job I have to walk at around six miles an hour!” I said to him, “Who are you following?” If Jesus is walking at three miles per hour and we are walking at six miles per hour, who are we following?

One of the gifts of parenting an autistic child is that walking at six miles an hour is—literally—not an option. Moving slower isn’t a therapeutic aspiration, but a necessary reality.

I am reminded of this daily. My autistic son likes to play golf. Like any child, he will grab a club and a ball and say “watch me”. Then, about half the time, he will go up to the ball and hit it like “normal”. But other times he will freeze, hovering over the ball, sometimes for minutes, before finally hitting it. I don’t know why he does it—or what synapses are, or are not, firing in his brain. But I do know that it forces me to slow down.

Christ healing a bleeding woman—early Christian catacomb

Who is one person?

So my invitation to all of us this year is to forgo efficiency goals and goblin goals alike. By all means, let us slow down…but for the sake of another person.

• an autistic child

• an aging parent

• a nagging spouse

• an annoying roommate

• a depressed friend

• a grieving neighbor.

Please note: this is not about finding yet another way to feel better about ourselves. I, for one, have watched one-too-many sentimental news story about some “super-nice person” being “super-nice” to someone who desperately needed someone to be nice to them. Swinton is right:

instead of receiving slowness as a gift from those with disabilities, people are tempted to transpose the gift into acts of charity and in so doing turn the receiver of the gift into an object of charity.

This is not about feeling better about ourselves or “doing our good deed for the day” (or week, or year). This is not about parading our righteousness before others (Mt. 5). This is about being attentive to the real & actual people God has placed in our real & actual lives. I can think of no better “goal” than asking: this year, who is one person in my life that I can slow down to love?

For me, it actually won’t be my autistic son, Sam. It will be my daughter, Georgia. She is the middle child, sandwiched between an older brother with special needs and a younger brother who is three months old, both demanding constant attention. When I am with Georgia, I am often half-there—distracting myself or wondering how the other kids are doing. She needs me to slow down to love her.

So who is it for you? Not five different people. Not five different causes. One person.